Something was just wrong, but Olivia Maurel did not know what. Until she found out that her parents paid for her. She found her biological mother after a long search.
Olivia Maurel always knew something was “off” about her birth. The secretive behaviour of her mother made it clear to her: the woman who raised her did not give birth to her. “There were no pictures of my pregnant mother, and I am five days old in the first pictures of me.”
Despite the DNA test and recognition of her biological mother, Maurel is officially a child of the parents she grew up with. Immediately after her birth, her birth certificate was sealed, and she was given a new one. There, her intended parents are listed as biological parents, allowing them to take little Olivia to France. “Swapping birth certificates should be completely illegal when you think of it.”
Maurel’s parents came into contact with her biological mother in the early nineties through a surrogacy agency. Because of the age of her intended mother, surrogacy was the only option left.
All these question marks over her head caused Maurel psychological problems, she says. She fears rejection and has difficulties in her relationships with older women. Apart from that, she has bipolar disorder, giving her depressive episodes. However, that is not because she was born from surrogacy, Maurel warns. “I inherited it from my biological mother, who is not mentally stable. The surrogacy agency should have rejected her because of that, but they did not.”
Maurel is still in touch with the family that raised her and her biological family. However, she is convinced that surrogacy is a bad thing. The births of her children, now aged between two and five, made her even more determined to fight against surrogacy. “I was so scared during my pregnancies because I did not know 25 per cent of my children’s genes. I did not know what medical issues I could transfer to them.”
Source: A child of a surrogate mother, now a fighter against the industry